Eyeing more customers in the corporate space, EMC Wednesday said it has purchased the storage management software line of BMC Software .

The acquisition of BMC Software's PATROL Storage Manager software is the key piece in the companies' global sales, marketing and technology partnership.

EMC said it would ultimately eradicate the product and move BMC customers to its own storage management line, ControlCenter.

In turn, BMC plans to resell EMC's ControlCenter family of products as its
exclusive storage resource management line through its MarketZone sales
program. Financial terms of the deal were not made public.

The move is another sign of ongoing consolidation in the software industry, and signals more merging to come between software companies and product lines, particularly in the realm of storage management software, which oversees data flow on the network. Like EMC, rivals such as Computer Associates , IBM and HP
continue are trying lure more customers and market share with their storage management software.

For Hopkinton, Mass.'s EMC, the deal means deeper penetration into the
corporate infrastructure of major enterprises where Houston's BMC has a solid
footprint. BMC will now have a successful storage management software line
to offer along with its enterprise systems management and services
offerings.

"The partnership with BMC marks our first reseller arrangement with an
independent software provider to market EMC ControlCenter as their storage
resource management offering on an exclusive basis," said Joe Tucci, EMC's
President and CEO. "Customers will benefit both from BMC's deep knowledge at
the server and application level and from EMC's expertise at the storage and
storage network level, providing an end-to-end management solution handling
nearly every layer of the IT infrastructure."

Enterprise Storage Group analyst Steve Kenniston applauded the play.

"This deal is very good for both companies," said Kenniston. "BMC need to be able to fulfill the storage related commitments they had and EMC, since today they don't have a server/networking management strategy/ story, it makes a really good fit. The other potential OEMs have that strategy and it would have given
them access to try to replace BMC's product. Here there isn't that risk. So, BMC
gets to fulfill the commitments they have to customers with good product and
technology, and EMC gets to work with more customers and they will roll ECC
into these shops as a complement to Patrol."

EMC and BMC also agreed that EMC will support BMC in providing maintenance
service and support to all current PATROL Storage Manager customers. Also,
BMC will be able to offer PATROL Storage Manager customers' equivalent EMC
ControlCenter licenses in order to provide a migration or upgrade path from
PATROL Storage Manager.